Derek McDowell (Labour)

It is my pleasure to second the motion before the House in the name of the Labour Party Senators. The Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, spoke in a similar type debate in this House some weeks ago. He gave us a comprehensive description of the Government's policy which also entailed a description of the current problem. He estimated that we needed approximately 220,000 child care places. He freely acknowledged that the current EOCP was providing approximately 30,000 places, of which three quarters had been provided up to June of last year. The Minister will, therefore, not have a problem with my stating that we have a major difficulty in terms of the supply of places and their related cost. This is having an effect on the lifestyles of individuals, has serious labour market effects, which we can explore at some lengths, and has a particularly intense effect on particular categories of people, especially lone parents.

It is interesting to examine the participation by women in the labour market in the past ten years. In a relatively short time, we have come from a position in which our participation rates were much lower than the European average to a position in which, for most age groups of women, the participation rates are approximately equal to the European average. However, there is one single and striking exception which is the case of women who have had two or more children. There is a dramatic and almost immediate fall-off in the participation rates in the labour market in Ireland of women who fall into that category.

The single clearest reason for this fact is the absence of affordable child care. We all acknowledge that we need more workers, which requires more migrant workers coming into Ireland. However, surely the minimum we should do is encourage and facilitate Irish workers, most of them women, who want to remain in the workforce to do so. They should be offered an active choice rather than obliging them to stay at home because of economic necessity.

There are two sides to the problem of child care in Ireland, namely, demand and supply. On the demand side, the Government's response has just one string to its bow, namely, child benefit. As my colleague, Senator O'Meara has stated, the increase in child benefit in recent years is one which has had all-party support and is self-evidently a good thing. However, it was never intended as a child care subsidy. Rather, it was intended as an aid to parents for all of the costs of bearing and rearing children. It was never intended to have a serious impact on the actual cost to parents of child care. Even though the increase has been substantial, the Government cannot come anywhere close to compensating people for the real costs of child care.

This brings me to a critical issue or principle, on which I express a more personal view than that of my party. Nevertheless, it is an issue we must grasp because we have spectacularly failed to do so in recent years. It must be the role of the State, in looking to compensate or assist people in paying for child care, to acknowledge that people who actually incur cost and who pay out money are in a different position from those for whom the opportunity cost is the major cost. In other words, people who pay out money are in a different position from those who choose to stay at home and look after their children.

I know this causes upset and that women who stay at home to look after their children feel that they are in some sense being undervalued if they receive less assistance or subvention from the State than those who actively go out to work. However, if we do not accept the practical reality that people who incur real, actual costs are in a different position from those who incur opportunity cost, we will never get to grips with this problem because the State is not in a position to provide an equal measure of subvention to people who decide to stay at home and those who actually incur costs.

If the State provided an equal measure of subvention, it would not come anywhere close to covering the cost of child care, which is the crux of the problem. My preferred option, and that of my party, is where the State gets into direct provision. However, the State is not doing this. The equal opportunities programme has had the same type of approach as that which we have taken on so many other issues. The State would prefer that people sort this issue out for themselves, either in the informal sector or pay well over the odds if they can afford to do so. The Government then looks to plug the gaps. For example, it will assist the community and voluntary sectors to set up child care committees and so on in areas in which there is a need which cannot otherwise be met by the market.

Typically this leads to a messy multi-tiered system, as is the case in so many other areas in Ireland such as primary care centres, legal aid and so on. Therefore, one finds oneself trying to create a false equality between various sectors when we have created an inequality from the start. My preference, and that of my party, is for the State to acknowledge that it has a responsibility to make direct provision, whether it is through using school facilities or constructing and subventing existing facilities. The voluntary sector will not cut it because this will lead to inequality. It relies in terms of the initiative on the voluntary sector itself. The Government states that if a group has a good plan, it will happily subvent it. I readily acknowledge that the EOCP has been good in subventing and assisting people with plans and initiative. Unfortunately, however, it is so often the case that the areas of greatest disadvantage and need, where the children need assistance and child care most, are the areas in which the gaps arise, not by accident but by virtue of social circumstances. Even now, we need to extend State provision by way of direct provision.

In terms of costs, there is a range of options. I am willing to consider possibilities which I would have been reluctant to consider some years ago. While not speaking for my party, there is some merit, for example, in the notion of a voucher system, in which people are provided with an entitlement to buy a certain amount of child care facilities. There is merit in this because it ensures the provision goes towards reducing the cost of child care and does not get lost in a family budget. However, I acknowledge that for it to work would require not only quality control but cost control.

I appreciate that I have just thrown out a couple of not very well linked ideas but this is an issue regarding which the Government has singularly failed in recent years. It has done so not simply because it has failed to deliver but because what it was trying to do in the first place was not adequate. I second the motion on behalf of the Labour Party.